It seems that Sega World Sydney had it's own Sonic Cosmo Fighter cabinet, and it was fully localised in English.... AND...! It's been found. There's quite a long Twitter thread showing some of the cabinet, the owner also seems open to dumping the ROM if anyone is in a position to help them out? https://twitter.com/iamamazing100/status/1407709910964441089?s=19
It would be nice if we got a dump of this. Was the original ever dumped? If so, I feel like it wasn't distributed.
So am I understanding it correctly that this is the only known English version cabinet? I was under the impression that this wasn't released outside of Japan. It's been awhile since I've really thought much less read about this game. I was also waiting any moment for Sonic to say "Whoooaa'aaa MAMA! MANN I'm pretty!" on that thing.
What an amazing discovery! Whilst we're on the subject, does anyone know why the wiki page is called "Waku Waku SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter"? Where does the Waku Waku come from? https://info.sonicretro.org/Waku_Waku_SegaSonic_Cosmo_Fighter There was "Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car", so did things just get muddled up?
In the early days of Sonic Retro, people made assumptions and didn't read things. They weren't alone - the whole internet was doing it. So yes move the page etc.
Sega World Sydney sold all its inventory off at auction after it closed - some of the rides went to a Buddhist theme park in India, the Sonic/Sally statue ended up rotting away in a junkyard (as I'm sure we all know), and the arcade games were acquired by many different parties, usually Australian arcade operators. I was aware that the Cosmo Fighter cabinet from the venue was out there as it was for sale on one of the Facebook groups not that long ago, but much like everyone else I had no idea it used a localised version. Makes you wonder what else turned up in the overseas Sega Worlds that we just don't know about yet...
Still eager to see the title screen to see just how much they actually localized. My money is on "the title screen is exactly the same and in Japanese."
https://info.sonicretro.org/Waku_Waku_SegaSonic_Cosmo_Fighter#Gameplay I don't have ops to move the article. Someone else will have to do it.
I'm curious as to whether a localised version of Sonic Patrol Car made it out of Japan as well now - overseas Sega World theme parks and arcades are known to have often been quite well supplied with imported rarities (SegaSonic Arcade, Puyo Puyo, etc). Not that we'll get the answers unless 100s more photos are uncovered/the cab's survived like this one has.
